


blue north

by yorus



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Art Museums, M/M, soft, strangers to potential lovers or friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorus/pseuds/yorus
Summary: Aone searches for something more, maybe something vast, maybe just something different. So he packs his bags and makes plans for Kobe, in the west, all the way across the country.
Relationships: Aone Takanobu/Kita Shinsuke
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	blue north

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [blue north](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29072712) by [librevers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/librevers/pseuds/librevers), [WTF Haikyuu 2021 (Haikyuu_Fandom_Kombat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haikyuu_Fandom_Kombat/pseuds/WTF%20Haikyuu%202021)



Miyagi lies in the north. It is familiar, comfortable, and everything Aone has ever called home. Sure, he’s been to other prefectures and cities, mostly for volleyball, but he’s always returned to Miyagi. Where else would he go? 

But Aone searches for something more, maybe something vast, maybe just something different. So he packs his bags and makes plans for Kobe, in the west, all the way across the country.

The shinkansen ride is uneventful. He transfers at the Tokyo station, and has the row to himself on both trains. That’s okay, it just means he can look out the window in peace and watch the scenery blur past. He follows the rise and dip of the landscape, parts where the blue sky is exposed, and parts where it’s only visible through the tiny gaps of leaves. 

\--

Aone is careful in his plans, and has only blocked out two days to be in Kobe. He’s made a list of places he wants to go, what times they open and close, and their admission fees, if there are any. The days are planned out with locations and food places researched on Google Maps and cross checked with Yelp. 

He visits Mount Rokko first, early in the morning. He takes the city bus to the cable car station, catches the first cable car that departs at 7:10, and is alone in the observatory, fresh mountain air all to himself. The sun is already up, and Aone watches as the morning glow wakes the city beneath. 

Here, everything is vast. Skyscrapers diminish into insignificance, entire cities rendered into just squares and rectangles. The unobstructed view stretches on for miles and miles, until it disappears into periwinkle blue, consumed by atmospheric perspective. He imagines himself down there, in the streets, a small blip among millions of others. 

It’s different. Kobe is a city, always breathing, always moving. It doesn’t wait. Kurihara, back in Miyagi, is a smaller town, sleepier. There, you waited. Waited for the years to pass, waited for opportunities to come by. There, Aone was only one in 60 something thousand. 

It’s different, but not in the ways that feel right. He doesn’t want to disappear into the existing mass of people, to blend in like another figure on the subway. 

Aone goes to Sorakuen Gardens next, respite tucked away between glass and concrete. It speaks of tradition and antiquity, with calming surroundings. He finds comfort under camphor trees and the smell of greenery. The water moves silently, rippling with the passing wind, lapping against the rocky pond bank. 

Here, there isn’t anything vast like sprawling landscapes to look at, but instead, swathes of flowers and leaves and small winding stone paths. 

It reminds him of home, a little. There is dirt underneath his feet, warmth in the air, and if he closes his eyes, he can imagine the outlines of buildings into silhouettes of mountains. 

He doesn’t know if he will find what he’s searching for here, but he will enjoy it all the same. 

\--

On his second day, his last day, he plans to visit the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art. The pictures he’s seen online showed a structure composed of rigid planes, a winding staircase, made of concrete. Aone knows the material is dense, and is seldom applied to things that look as elegant as this. 

He gets on the JR, and counts the stops. According to Maps, he needs to get off at Nada Station, which leaves him with five stops to go. There is an empty row with a window seat open, and Aone takes it. 

On the next stop, the train starts to fill up a little more, and to his surprise, someone slides into the seat next to him. By glancing out the corner of his eye, he glimpses white hair with the ends colored black, and a pointed side profile. 

The image is a little familiar, but he can’t quite place it. 

Aone goes back to staring out the window before he gets caught for observing too long. 

The memory pricks at his mind, searching for the context of white hair with ends colored black, like a fresh calligraphy brush just dipped in ink. It’s distinct, Aone should remember. He knows it can’t be anyone from Kurihara, or Miyagi, because he knows his circle there well, and has known them for many years. 

It must be volleyball related then, since it was all that he breathed and played back then. He remembers nationals as a dream, fleeting and within grasp just for a moment. 

Nationals. Aone had spent many waking hours in front of a screen, watching matches when he could, imagining that it could be himself, on that court. It was a habit picked up in his second year, when Karasuno had their miracle run to Tokyo. 

And then he remembers, remembers ink dipped hair on tv screen, remembers him speaking, saying that they would win, that they were in good condition, remembers a team called Inarizaki, favorites to win the whole thing that year, and remembers watching them fall. 

He had empathized in that moment. You could be prepared, could be as careful and thorough as possible, but still come up short. 

But for all that Aone does remember, he cannot recall his name.

It would be weird, he thinks, to suddenly say something, _hello you don’t know me but we both played volleyball, I saw you on tv once, didn’t catch your name though._ Aone grimances a little at the thought, and doesn’t say anything. 

He has two more stops left, and Aone comes to the realization that he would have to ask to move past his seat neighbor and then awkwardly have to shuffle out of the sliver of space allowed. 

As the train pulls out of Sannomiya Station, Aone shifts in his seat, debating on whether he should move to get up now, while the train is in motion or wait until it stops and use the .3 seconds between when it stops and the doors open to make his way to the doors before passengers start piling in. By the time he makes a decision, it’s too late, and the train is already pulling into Nada Station. 

He stands just before the train stops, prepared to murmur an _excuse me_ to get off, but his seatmate also gets up before he can say anything. They both exit the train, and Aone gets moved along with the crowd, moved along unfamiliar stairwells and pillars. He eventually finds a place to re-orient himself, and tries to guess which exit sign is the south exit of Nada Station. 

“Where ya headed?”

Aone turns at the distinctly Kansai accented voice, and finds the white haired guy from before. He supposes there is no harm in telling him. 

“Hyogo Museum of Art,” Aone replies. 

“Oh. Me too. The exit’s this way.”

The man doesn’t make a gesture to which staircase exactly, but starts to walk, so Aone has no choice but to follow. 

“Aone Takanobu,” he offers after a while of walking in silence. 

“Kita Shinsuke, nice to meet you.”

\--

He learns that Kita isn’t from the city either, but he is from Hyogo, and he comes down here every once in a while for the art, like routine. Kita describes the order in which he likes to visit the galleries each time, like a ritual. He learns that Kita enjoys Rodin, emotion pulled from bronze and made physical, but that his favorite section is the Japanese modern art section and the blending of tradition. Kita says that the contemporary galleries are okay, good for thinking and spending a lot of time in front of something and giving up trying to make your own sense of it to just read the plaques.

Aone tells him he’s from Miyagi, and that he has never been one for art outside of aesthetic appreciation. He thinks he likes the freely moving kinetic sculptures of Susumu, nature translated into motion, and the way Yoshitatsu’s rough bronze gives way to birds. He listens to the way Kita talks quietly about Japanese painting associated with Hyogo, from the traditional style of Kagaku to the blue green landscapes of Kaii in the _Nihonga_ style. Aone decides he quite likes Kaii and the expansive spaces he painted, of things that are quiet, moonlit rivers, and dense forests. Despite the cool tones used and the uninhabited views, the paintings aren’t lonely. He doesn't feel solitude or melancholy, he wants to dip his toes into the water, wants to run his hand against the foiliage, wants to try and grab the moon straight out of the sky.

Aone thinks he’s only seen places like these in his dreams. 

He looks away from the work for a second, looks at Kita who is still facing forwards and observing. Maybe Japanese painting is his favorite gallery. 

Aone smooths hands over exposed concrete, takes in the view of Osaka bay on one end, and the Kobe scenery on the other. In the middle, Kita stands, leaned against a pillar, absentmindedly looking around. The large glass pane windows lets the afternoon light cut across the room and splays across his torso, just missing the planes of his face. 

Wordlessly, Kita pushes off the pillar, emerges into the warm light, and walks to Aone’s side to look at the same view. 

“How long are ya staying?”

“Until the end of today,” Aone answers. He thinks about everything he accounted for when leaving Miyagi, and none of it included this. It’s something new, something different, and feels a lot like whatever Aone had left to search for in the first place. It’s not home yet, not in the ways Miyagi always is, but it could be. 

“Shame,” Kita says. He reaches over and tears a corner of the museum map Aone’s holding and presses the paper against Aone’s shoulder while taking out a pen. 

Aone doesn’t dare move, and feels the scritches of whatever Kita’s writing through his shirt. When the pressure lifts, he stays still, until his arm is nudged and Kita’s passing him a piece of paper with a small smile. When Aone takes it and notices the digits printed neatly on, he flushes a little, nods, and tucks it safely, carefully, into his pocket. 

“Did ya like it in Hyogo?” 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I’d like to come back someday. For longer.”

“Don’t miss it too much,” Kita laughs. 

“I already do.”

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello thank you for reading !  
> there was [this tweet](https://twitter.com/Leoppii/status/1323827075581534209?s=20) and then this was born  
> catch me on twitter [@yoruuss](https://twitter.com/YORUUSS)


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